This is exactly what Coie wondered, so he designed a follow-up study to test whether children’s groupings would stay the same if they were placed in a new context. He started by inviting ten-year-old children to his research lab to participate in playgroups. These groups were not randomly composed: each included four children from four different schools, none of whom had met before. One child in each group was Accepted in his originating school, one was Rejected, one Neglected, and one Average. (Coie excluded Controversials, since they are uncommon.)
For one hour each week, the children met to play together in much the same way they might in class or at recess. They gathered in a room that had been stocked with games, Legos, toy cars, inflatable boxing gloves, markers, paper, and so on. First, each group engaged in a structured activity supervised by an adult. Next, they had unsupervised time for free play. Then, once playtime was over, it was time for the researchers to unobtrusively measure each child’s popularity. They did so in a particularly clever way.
Rather than make the point of their experiment too obvious, they asked one of their trained research assistants to drive each participant home at the end of every weekly session. During the ride the researchers first engaged in normal conversation about the child’s interests and hobbies, but before they reached their destination, they asked him whom he liked the most in his playgroup, followed by whom the child liked next best, and so on, until all their playmates had been named, including the child they liked least.
At the end of Week 1, Coie and one of his graduate students at the time, Janis Kupersmidt, examined the compiled results of these interviews and discovered that there was absolutely no relationship between how well liked children were at their own schools and how well liked they were within the group of unfamiliar playmates. The new configurations truly offered a fresh start. A week later, the researchers conducted the interviews again and still found no correspondence between the children’s likability in the playgroup and at their respective schools.
But by the third playgroup session, a remarkable similarity emerged between the popularity of each child in his group and at his original school. It only took three hours of play for Accepted children to become accepted again. Rejecteds were once again the most disliked, and Neglecteds again proved themselves unlikely to be picked as most or least liked. The study continued for another three weeks, during which the patterns grew even stronger.
Subsequent research has revealed that the factors that cause us to be accepted by peers are fairly universal and enduring—they have the potential to make us liked or disliked again and again, even as we change settings, for the rest of our lives. When Coie and Kupersmidt reviewed the videotapes from the first two weeks of their experiment, they noticed that in their new playgroups, the Accepted and Rejected children had already begun talking far more than their Average and Neglected counterparts. When Accepted children spoke, they were setting the norms for the group, gently reminding others of the rules, suggesting new games, and coming up with innovative ideas for how to make toys more interesting. But when Rejected children talked, they were more likely than the others to insult, threaten, tease, and boss around their peers. Rejected children also were the least likely to listen to directions when participating in the adult-structured activity. It was no surprise that children attained the identical level of popularity so soon after meeting brand-new peers. They behaved in the same ways that had determined their likability in their original schools.
Shortly after I began teaching my first college class on popularity, I had an opportunity to witness this phenomenon for myself. It was about midway through the semester when I got a call from an ABC News producer who wanted to film a replication of Coie and Kupersmidt’s classic experiment. My students and I received permission from parents at a local day-care center to film a group of three-year-olds who had known the peers in their respective classrooms for only a few months. Interviewing each child just as Coie and his colleagues did quickly revealed who among them was Accepted, Rejected, Neglected, and Average. We invited one child from each sociometric group, kids from different classrooms who had never played together, to gather in the school gymnasium. We then began to observe their interactions for what was expected to be a few weeks of play sessions.
But in this case, it took only about thirty minutes before the children’s previous popularity was revealed. In less than an hour, the child whose classroom peers had nominated her as Accepted had begun leading the others in a game with an oversized ball, and the child who had been picked as Rejected was excluded. I did not continue to study this group, but researchers who have worked with children over many years have found that over half of those who are categorized as Accepted, Rejected, Neglected, Controversial, or Average in elementary school continue to fall into the same group over five years later in high school, even those who have switched schools and become part of a brand-new group of peers.
Does the type of popularity we experience in our youth remain constant for the rest of our lives? Some say that we can hit the popularity reset button when we go to college, where we are suddenly surrounded by a far more homogeneous group of peers, at least in terms of academic achievement and ability to follow adults’ directions. In many European nations, this occurs in secondary school, where teens are already grouped by educational tracks.
But for most of adulthood, we find ourselves again in groups that are involuntarily assembled—peers who have been placed together for reasons other than common friendship, educational level, or familial relation. Then it is like grade school all over again. It doesn’t take long until groups of Accepteds, Rejecteds, Neglecteds, Controversials, and Averages begin to emerge. Often, the group we land in as adults is the same one we were in as youths, and this can have remarkable implications for us.
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It was not long before the holidays when employees of a large international tech company learned of an upcoming corporate “reorganization”—in other words, a major round of layoffs. In all, about 30 percent of the workforce would be let go by the end of the year. Three weeks after the announcement, forty-five hundred employees drove to work on the day that most would learn their fate.
One of these employees was a guy named Billy. I know him quite well. Billy had started working at the company about five years earlier, shortly after he finished graduate school at Harvard. Billy has two kids, a son who looks exactly like him and a daughter who is a clone of his wife. They had just agreed to buy a new house, and before they knew anything about the reorganization in Billy’s company, they had scheduled their closing on the day after layoffs would be announced.
Billy’s unit within the company is located in a building that has adopted an open floor plan, a well-lit bull pen of conference tables, stand-up desks, and free-floating file cabinets, with occasional cubicle dividers that reach only chest high. Everyone can hear their colleagues’ conversations, and there is no mystery about who is meeting with whom. It might as well be the school cafeteria all over again.
Billy usually chooses a desk close to the perimeter, alongside a wall of full-length windows that overlooks the parking lot. No matter where he sits, however, Billy experiences a lot of traffic at his workstation. People come by to say hello in the morning, congregate after difficult meetings to debrief and commiserate with him, and gather at lunchtime to decide where to eat. Even a casual visit to the office would reveal that he is one of the most well-liked people on his floor.
On the morning of the layoffs, Billy sat nervously at his desk waiting for a representative from human resources. He tried hard to focus on his work, but it was almost impossible to ignore the chatter of his coworkers as they paced and gossiped down the hall. Once his colleagues saw that he had arrived, Billy’s desk was surrounded by peers who wanted to hear his predictions, and for the next hour, no one got any work done.
Sitting across from Billy’s desk was Carl, a tall, lanky man in his mid-forties who had b
een working at the company for twelve years. Carl did not take part in the chatter. In fact, he rarely talked at all. Billy describes Carl as one of the “heads-down” people in the office. He is quite good at his job—his work is always on time and carefully completed—but he just isn’t very showy about it. He stays at his desk, he rarely eats lunch with others, and while he always pays attention in meetings, he rarely participates.
Carl’s workstation is well ordered and uncluttered. His desk has a few neatly labeled file folders tucked in the corner and a mug filled with about a dozen identical pens. On most days, he offers a brief nod and courteous smile to everyone as he walks through the break room to get his coffee, then sits at his desk and works undistracted until lunch. But on the day the layoffs were announced, Carl seemed agitated. He kept his cell phone close at hand, sending periodic texts to his wife as he overheard rumors. Occasionally he got up from his desk and disappeared for fifteen minutes at a time, but no one noticed.
On the far side of the room, sitting by himself, was Dan. Dan is in his late fifties. He is pleasant enough, generally gregarious and enthusiastic, but something about him seems a bit off. In dozens of little ways—none remarkable on their own, but collectively quite noticeable—Dan doesn’t seem to be tuned in to others. While his peers share minor details of their personal lives as they chat in the break room, Dan discloses just a little too much information about his marital woes, making others uncomfortable. When friendly banter leads to a volley of quips around the conference room table, Dan hogs the ball, getting carried away with his own story. He even looks like an outsider, wearing wrinkled khakis and white sneakers in an otherwise preppy-dressing office. It’s not a difference he seems to notice.
Dan had no idea whether or not he would be laid off, he told me, but he certainly was curious what others thought about his fate. He roamed the floor peering over the shoulders of colleagues who huddled together to make predictions. In most cases, they continued their conversations without widening their circle to include him, and he continued to walk from group to group.
The one person in the office who didn’t seem nervous at all was Frank, the slick, well-groomed assistant whom Billy calls one of the “manage-ups” of the firm. Frank is in his mid-twenties, far junior to most of his colleagues but well known by all. He is the epitome of charm and polish—smooth and funny but never really offering much of substance. He is quite helpful to any superior who needs his help (“Sure thing . . . happy to do it . . . no sweat”), but when a fellow assistant asks for a favor, Frank is downright rude (“Your problem, not mine”). As he walks to his desk, Frank offers an eager nod to almost everyone he passes. Some greet him back enthusiastically, while others nod curtly. While his colleagues fret over the upcoming layoff announcements, Frank sits back calmly and plays a game on his phone.
In this company, Billy is Accepted, just as he has been for most of his life. He describes himself as an introvert—he would prefer to play golf alone than to network at a company party. But likability is not necessarily related to either introversion or extroversion. Like many Accepted people, Billy is likable because he has the ability to read the room—any room. His ideas aren’t always better than others’, but he knows exactly when in a meeting to offer them, and he often gets the credit. Just slightly faster than his colleagues, he recognizes when there is an emerging consensus or conflict. He’s good at tuning in to the emotional underpinnings of his coworkers’ statements. But perhaps most important, Billy is adept at using his social skills to help others feel connected to him.
He does so in a number of ways. First, Billy is great at asking astute questions. Studies show that people who ask many questions of each other when they first meet—a highly effective way of scanning for an emotional connection—are more likely to have high-quality relationships even months later. When you first meet Billy, his questions clearly communicate that he wants to know more about you, and he finds most everything you say to be interesting, important, and relatable. Billy’s social behavior signals that he cares about the herd. People want to talk to him because they believe that Billy wants to talk to them. That makes him likable.
Second, Billy has a terrific sense of humor. This trait also is a function of reading the room well, because a good joke requires understanding the current mood or sentiment, and exaggerating or twisting it for comic effect. More fundamentally, humor offers biological benefits. Laughter is associated with the release of dopamine and endorphins that promote euphoria and improved immune response—and people like others who help them feel good.
Third, just like the Accepted children in Coie’s studies, Billy is described by others as someone who is trusted, has many friends, seems fair, happy, polite, patient, and knows how to share. And as research on Accepted children would predict, Billy generally has had a very successful life. Studies show that when Accepted children become adults, they have higher self-esteem, make more money, and have better-quality relationships with friends and romantic partners. They even grow up to be physically healthier than their less accepted peers. The power of likability persists above and beyond the effects of all kinds of factors that we usually think are most important, like intelligence, socioeconomic status, and healthy behavior.
Carl is Neglected. In childhood, the Neglecteds watch their peers play from afar, remaining behind a fence poking a worm with a stick, rather than joining the others. Or worse, they attempt to take part in a game of hide-and-seek, but no one tries to find them. Some Neglecteds are anxious—desperately eager to be a part of a group but rarely confident enough to initiate interactions with others. Studies show that as adults, Neglected people are a bit slower to begin dating or establish secure, committed relationships, and they usually choose professions that do not rely heavily on interactions with others. They are unlikely to become public speakers, salespeople, or recruiters.
Still, many Neglecteds do very well in adult life. Some manage to quell their anxieties, while others simply prefer to spend a great deal of time alone. There is also evidence that being Neglected may be more associated with one’s particular environment than it is for other groups. In Coie’s studies of children’s sociometric groups over a five-year period, the Neglected category was the least stable. While most Rejecteds and Accepteds remained so over time, Neglecteds were just as likely to ultimately land in almost any of the sociometric groups six years later, though they almost never became Controversials.
Dan is Rejected. The Rejecteds have been the category most studied by clinical psychologists, because peer rejection turns out to be a very important predictor of mental health difficulties throughout our lives. Research has found that Rejecteds can be divided into two subgroups. One includes those who are highly aggressive. Rejected-Aggressives become angry, rude, or defensive when upset. On the playground, the Rejected-Aggressive child is the boy who hits someone who took his toy without asking, or the girl who excludes just one classmate from her party. In a business meeting, it is the person who is so desperate to be heard that he or she cuts off and undermines others. In the community, it is the individual who gossips about neighbors when he or she feels wronged.
A key characteristic of the Rejected-Aggressives is that they often don’t realize that their behavior is inappropriate. Many do not even know they are rejected, and in fact, Rejected-Aggressives often believe that they are the group’s favorite. Many aggressive people are not rejected. But about half of those rejected are also aggressive, and these Rejected-Aggressives have far worse outcomes than those who are only aggressive or only rejected.
Dan is actually a Rejected-Nonaggressive, a group that violates the social norms in any number of nonhostile ways. Some Rejected-Nonaggressives are disliked merely because they look unusual or come from a different background than most of their peers. Others are rejected because they engage in odd behaviors. Still others have not matured as quickly or in the same way as others. In Dan’s case, his problem was being too smart in a
world where being smart can be very uncool.
Dan’s intelligence wasn’t always an obstacle. In elementary school, he was his teachers’ favorite, often called on to tutor classmates who had difficulty with math. By third grade, he won a district-wide math tournament and remembers receiving a standing ovation from his peers at an elementary school assembly. He was the first to be singled out by the principal whenever she visited Dan’s classroom, and his peers, recognizing his special status among their teachers, were always eager to play with him on the playground.
Of course, this all changed for Dan by middle school. Suddenly the same low-achieving classmates whom he used to tutor started to call him names, and Dan became a nerd, a pariah. It seemed as if every academic award he received only further branded him a geek in the eyes of his peers, and by tenth grade, he became so mercilessly teased by his classmates that it became easier for him to live in his own little world—deliberately oblivious to whatever his peers thought was cool.
Dan’s story is typical of what I have found in my own research. Following over two hundred children until they reached adolescence, Annette La Greca and I found that at age nine, high-achieving children are typically the best liked of all. Teachers love them, they are terrific at solving social problems, and their peers are excited to play with them. These children enjoy high self-esteem and the lowest levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness compared to their peers. But six years later, these same kids reported precipitous declines in their emotional well-being. As a group, they were the most depressed, socially anxious, lonely, and insecure of all adolescents.
What changed? Not their intelligence—they were still the smartest kids in class, achieving the highest grades. But by their early teens, their peers’ attitudes toward high achievement transformed, and the smart kids suffered the social and psychological consequences. Getting good grades and trying hard in school is exactly what adults want kids to do. In other words, these kinds of behaviors reflect adults’ values. In childhood, kids think adults are “cool,” so acting in accordance with adult values is cool, too. In adolescence, however, we are programmed to look toward our peers more than our parents. And there could be nothing more “uncool” than doing what your parents want. So among teens, getting good grades or trying really hard to achieve suddenly attracts ridicule and scorn.
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